Review: ‘Hunger’

Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel "Hunger," memorably adapted as a Cannes best actor-winning vehicle for Swede Per Oscarsson in 1966, does a whole lot less for Joseph Culp in this misbegotten digital feature. Reset in contempo L.A., pic makes sense only as a vanity acting showcase. Commercial prospects are nil.

Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel “Hunger,” memorably adapted as a Cannes best actor-winning vehicle for Swede Per Oscarsson in 1966, does a whole lot less for Joseph Culp in this misbegotten digital feature. Reset in contempo L.A., albeit with scant logic or ingenuity, pic makes sense only as a vanity acting showcase — and it doesn’t flatter on that score, either. Commercial prospects are nil.

Protag is now a would-be scenarist chucked from his apartment for nonpayment of rent, sleepless and starving, pegging all hopes on his hand-written treatment left on the desk of a callous studio exec (lead’s vet actor pa, Robert Culp). Divorced from its turn-of-the-century, Norwegian bourgeoisie milieu, Hamsun’s proto-existential Portrait of the Artist as a Saintly Young Madman plays as pretentious and silly, particularly when the junior Culp’s perf retains a vague “period” look and manner utterly incongruous with real L.A. streets. Character’s fixation on an elusive Asian-American beauty (Kathleen Luong) results in some ludicrous scenes. Even within no-budget limits, helmer M. (Maria) Giese (who made a more professional debut with ’96 Brit soccer drama “When Saturday Comes”) falls well short of achieving stylistic or tonal cohesion.

Hunger

Production

A Market Street Prods. presentation. Produced by M. Giese, Joseph Culp. Executive producers, James Quill, Daniel Franklin. Directed, written by M. Giese, based on the novel by Knut Hamsun.